Left for Dead - cayenne pepper 0963283901, 9780963283900

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By DICK QUINN

After my heart attack and failed bypass, I saved my life and beat Heart Disease ._______ ___, without drugs. You can, too!

ea. How I beat heart disease and the FDA. ea. Head-off your heart attack with herbs. ea. Lower cholesterol & blood pressure naturally. ea. The "12 Day Flush" cleans your arteries. ea. Herbs for safe energy every day. ea. Heart herbs that can save your life! ea. Herbal cures for everyday ailments. ea. Dangers of heart Surgery, and Drugs. ea. New ideas for a happy, healthier life without drugs or surgery.

The Chinese word for crisis is "dangerous opportunity."

LEFT FOR DEAD by Dick Quinn Contributing Writers Shannon Quinn & Colin Quinn

Cover Design by Traver and Assoc. Herb lliustrations by Kathy Vaneps & Karen Berry Flemming Typography by JEZAC Type & Design

Special thanks to George Town friend and poet LEFT FOR DEAD © Copyright 1992 by Shannon Quinn and Col in Quinn

IM Printing April 1992 2nd Priming June 1992 3rd Printing September 1992 4th Printing December 1992 5th Printing December 1993 61h Printing Jul y 1993 7th Printing September 1993 8th Priming February 1994 9th Priming May 1994 10th Priming Septemberl994 11th Priming April 1995 12th Printing December 1996 13th Printing November 1997 14th Printing April 1998 15th Princing September 1999 16th Printing March 2000 17th Princing March 2001 All rights reserved. No part or this work may be reproduced or used in any form by any means - graphic, electrnnlc, or mechanical. including photocopying. recording. taping. or any infonnation stor.1gc and retrieval system - without wri11cn permission of the publisher.

ISBN 0-9632339-0-1

$12.95

£10 U.K.

ll.F. Quinn Publishing C o. 2235 East 38th Street l\ l inneapolis, MN 55407 Phone: (800) 283-3998 Website: www.rfquinn.com

Dedicated to Elsie Madison, the lady at the lake.

CONTENTS PART I - My Story 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

How It Started . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Medical Procedure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . My Recovery ............................. Since 1978... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Knowledge is the Key . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1988: My Tenth Anniversary ... .......... .... Farewell to Heart Foods .................... . 8. The FDA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9. Letters from the Heart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10. Prescriptions for Myself. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

3 9 19 27 41 55 67

69 67 87

PART II-Herbs for the Heart 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18.

Cayenne . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 Garlic . ............ . ........ ...... ...... 111 Ginger . ..... . ..... ... .... . .. . ....... .... 119 Gotu Kola ......... . . . . ... . . .. .. . ........ 125 Hawthorn ....... . ...... . . . .... . ......... 129 Lecithin ....... .. ... ..... .. . ............ 133 Onion ... .... ..... . . ..... ...... ....... .. 143 Valerian . .... .. .. .. ................... ... 149

PART III - The Heart 19. Techniques of Diagnosis ..... .... ... . ...... .. 157 20. Surgery ........ .. ... . ...... .. . ...... .. .. 161 21. Drugs .................................. 173

APPENDIX I - Terms of Hear t Disease .... ... . .... 183 APPENDIX II - Risk Factors of Heart Disease .. ..... 187 Bibliography ................................ 195

Index ... ................................... 199

--PART I - -

MY STORY by Dick Quinn

"The individual has the right ofhis own wisdom to choose methods for his well being and longevity. This right is not to be taken from us." - Arthur L. Kraslow, M.D.

My Credentials I am an expert on heart disease because I have it. I have had a heart attack with a near death experience, an angiogram, a double coronary bypass, heart failure and an incredible recovery. An herb I discovered has kept me alive and given me excellent health, vigor and energy since October 21, 1978. There is no question what was wrong with me. I had severely blocked arteries which the doctors said required surgery. I can show you the scars. After surgery, my energy, vitality and general health declined rapidly. My condition deterioriated for six months. I fain ted often, experienced dizziness and sudden loss of energy. Finally, I had a long, frightening blind spell one afternoon. In spite of the cardiologist's continued reassurances, I knew I was dying. Then I discovered the herb that made me well. Today, I am very much alive. I don't need heart or blood pressure drugs, so I'm not impotent or constipated and don't have kidney or liver failure. I'm not depressed. I am energetic, ambitious and enthusiastic. I feel good every day. The herb I discovered works so well for me, I want you to know about it. I discovered other herbs you should know about, too. Maybe they will work for you, as they have for me.

1 HOW IT STARTED t was May, 1978. I was 42 years old, wrote magazine stories Ipounds and ads for a living and felt fine. I only weighed a few more than I did in high school and had quit smoking a year before. My wife, five children and I lived on a farm in Wisconsin. My blood pressure had been high since I was 16; it ran in the family. So did strokes and heart attacks. My mother survived a heart attack at 38. My father and his brother both died from strokes at age 47. Their sister also died of a stroke. All four of my grandparents died before I was born. Everyone in the family had circulation problems, but I thought I was in pretty good shape. One night, I came home from work to discover our 1,500 pound family steer in the neighbor's field eating corn stubble. It was a chilly evening. I walked across the pasture and began to chase him home. Suddenly, I had an unusual and very unpleasant pain in both arms. It felt like the veins and arteries on the inside of my arms collapsed. It took several minutes for the pain to stop. I suspected the pain was angina, but hoped it wasn't. Angina would mean heart trouble. Big trouble for me. I was only 42. I wasn't supposed to have a heart attack yet. The next night, I went outside briefly and the pain happened again. It seemed the chill brought it on. I called the doctor. The doctor examined me and monitored my heart with an electro-cardiogram. The next day, I returned with my tennis

shoes to take a stress cardiogram. I ran on the track until I collapsed. The doctor then announced he thought he had found a "problem." I think the "prob1em" was actually a heart attack I had during the stress test. The doctor scheduled me to enter St. Mary's Hospital in Minneapolis the following Tuesday to have an angiogram. He gave me a bottle of nitroglycerine tablets with solemn admonitions to "stay home, don't get excited, don't work-j ust rest and take two of these every four hours until you check into the hospital on Tuesday for the angiogram." I could not believe this was happening to me. I tried to relax over the weekend, but didn't get much rest. I couldn't seem to recover from the exhaustion I felt from the stress test. I had an early appointment Monday morning with a new client.

My heart a ttack 1 got up at 6 a.m. that Monday to drive the 35 miles to St. Paul. It was May 29, 1978. I felt terrible all during the drive. I was sick, shaky, sweaty and very tired. I stopped at a diner to buy co ffe e and a roll. I hoped the caffeine and sugar would make me feel better. They didn't. At 8:00 a.m. , I was waiting for an elevator in a Minneapolis office building, on my way to the meeting. I felt terribly sick and t ired. It had taken real effort to carry my briefcase up the steps and into the bui1ding from the car. It was an expensive new black glass building with an atrium soaring over the lobby. I put my briefcase on the floor and stood waiting for the elevator. I remember looking s traight ahead and just standing there, trying to rest s tanding up, like a horse. Suddenly, an overwhelming presence seemed to take charge of my spirit, my life force, my soul, my being. By whatever name, my life was in its hands. I was swept up irresistibly with incredible power.

It seemed my spirit was being separated from my body, so my body could die. I was connected to my body by only the most tenuous thread. Soon, that part of me would die. My body would be discarded, worn out. There was no pain. I wasn't tired anymore . I felt comfortable, peaceful and strangely powerful. I soared high above, leaving my body standing before the elevator. I was suddenly floating in the air, watching myself down below. My body didn't collapse or fall in pain, it just stood there. I felt an almost physical link or connection with my body. The connection could break at any moment. I couldn 't control it, but I could wish. I could hang on, perhaps wish my soul back into my body. I tried hard not to let go. I met my mother, who had died months before. I saw her as a hazy light among a group of lights I recognized as her friends. I knew her at once. Her aura was her unmistakable signature. " Oh, there's Dick," I heard her say. "We're over here, Dick." I wanted to join her. It was so inviting to just let go of life, become a light and live forever. There were other people with her, other lights. I recognized them as people I knew who had died. They had no bodies, but I knew them. I recognized their spirits. I didn't see God. I had no forboding. No feeling of impending judgement, punishment or retribution, but rather a welcoming. My death experience was very pleasant and peaceful. I realized death is nothing to fear. Death is not ominous or threatening unless you're an evil, hurtful person. I think evil people meet their victims when they die. I discovered it's most important in life to be kind. I realized many of my major concerns are utterly trivial and silly. The people I met didn't urge me to join them, but they couldn't give me life, either. They just let me know I was welcome. "Join us any time," they seemed to say. I remembered

my Dad and the day he died. I was 9 years old. It is the most momentous event of my life and the saddest. I will never forget a second of that terrible day. I thought of my youngest son- he was 9 years old. And my other children. They would be so hurt, so shocked and saddened, like I was. I didn't want to do that to them. I felt I could only want to live. I couldn't make it happen, but if I wanted to live badly enough, maybe I would. I wished for life as hard as I possibly could. I concentrated on living. I held on tight and strained to get back into my body and finally it happened. I returned to my body and felt peace. I was stunned into contemplative silence for a while. I just stood there, by the elevator, in that big, black glass building in Minneapolis. The entire experience took only a few seconds; had it taken longer, I would have died. I had seen death and lived. My heart attack happened when the blood flow to my heart was blocked for a few seconds by an obstruction in my left main coronary artery. My heart misfired like a water pump sucking air. That's what happens in most heart attacks. It's sudden, inexorable, utterly overpowering. You are a passenger on the life and death train. You can't stop it and you can't get off. You wait to see if you live or die. There was no pain. It didn't hurt at alJ. I just drifted into the most fantastic experience of my life. In some ways, the kind of heart attack I had is the best and worst kind. The left main coronary artery is the most important of all. When it gets blocked, the heart attack doesn't hurt and the trip is incredible, but you usually die. There's onJy a 30% chance of survival and then maybe as a mushroom. I lived, but one day I will die. It could happen any time. Death will be an entirely pleasant state, but I want to postpone it as long as I can. There are a lot of lovely things you have to be alive to do. I returned to my body and lived on that day in May 1978. I was at peace and no longer felt ill.

Life goes on. I rode up several floors on the elevator, stopped at the men's room to wash my face and went to the meeting. Then I went home. That was the day I died for the firs t time.

Power Up! Fee/ GoodFast!

Safe, Tlte original "Power Caps" label.

THE

Heart Foods St~ry Nearly dead foU0W1ng hear1 anack and ~I ~ ery, a "'hear1

~gave me enel'IO'

thal"s lasted tO and \1'tali"' •J • food" ha.s )~ My 1iram nnwt'f' more of lhe z mosl ,... .. · 'tS me thinking power. ful brain herbs. II g. '!M attitude. confidence and a more poSI

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"Physicians pour drugs ofwhich they know little, to cure diseases ofwhich they know less, into humans of which they know nothing." Francois Voltaire ( 1694-1778)

2 THE MEDICAL PROCEDURE My angiogram. The next day I had an angiogram at St. Mary's Hospital in Minneapolis. The cardiologist ran a wire through the artery in my arm to my heart. He examined the arteries and heart chambers with a little television camera and measured the blood flow. We could both see the problem. The left main artery to the heart was 98% blocked. He said it provided the blood that powered the heart muscle itself. If the artery closed for even a few seconds and shut off the blood flow, I would have a heart attack with only a 30% chance of survival. I knew all about it. I had that h eart attack the day before, but I didn't tell him about it. I agreed to have emergency bypass surgery, because I expected to die at any time without it. I had absolutely no fear of death and felt at ease now that I thought my family knew what to expect. It was 0.K. to die now. I needn't feel guilty about hurting my children, as I had been hurt years before. They were ready for it now. Life or death-let it happen.

1l1y bypass. The next morning, they washed me down with hair remover, knocked me out, put me in a trough of ice water, put tubes

in my mouth, nose, penis, stomach, wrist and lungs, and took me to the operating room. The surgeon cut me open, then split my breastbone with a bone saw, pried my chest apart and opened the sack enclosing my heart. He put a tube from the heart-lung machine into my heart's right atrium to remove the blood from my body and another tube into the aorta to return it, bypassing my heart. The machine oxygenated my blood enough to keep me alive and pumped it through my body. Meanwhile, another surgeon was opening my right leg from ankle to knee to remove the saphenous vein, used for the bypass. They stopped my heart with a muscle-paralyzing potassium solution, cut openings for the two bypasses and sewed pieces of my leg vein in place. They re-started my heart with an electric shock, put it back inside my chest, clamped my chest shut with two stainless steel hog rings, sewed up the 13 inch long opening and delivered me to Intensive Care. A bunch of us were cut that morning, assembly line style. Truly a remarkable performance by remarkably skilled people working together like a precision drill team, in an extraordinarily equipped operating theatre at a cost of many dollars and much pain. Too bad it doesn't help the patient. It was June 1, 1978, two days after my heart attack. I awoke in Intensive Care a few hours after surgery, filled with tubes, terribly thirsty and uncomfortable, trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey. I wasn't in pain; the drugs took care of that. The operation had been a massive intrusion into my body. Not a heart attack, but an attack on my heart. I '\\las completely at ease when I faced surgery because I had no fear of death. I wanted to live, but I wasn't worried about it. I knew life or death was beyond my power to control, so I'd just go along and see what happened. I think being relaxed helped me suffer less soreness from the surgery. I regained my strength quickly after surgery and got out of Intensive Care in record time. Since I had no fear prior to surgery, I was relaxed and suffered little physical trauma. Others in the Intensive Care unit hurt a lot more than I

did and seemed to recover more slowly. The smokers were especially miserable because it was harder for them to breathe and it hurt so much to cough. Within days, I was discharged from the hospital, a star patient.

My decline. I began to feel myself getting weaker almost the day I got home. I tried to take long walks, as the physical therapist at the hospital advised, but I felt faint at the least exertion. After I had been home about a week, I decided to drive to a nearby lake for some sun. It was an eventful decision. I met an acquaintance at the lake, an older woman who was the mother of a friend. She noticed I was exhausted after the short walk from the car to the lake shore and abruptly told me to begin taking Cayenne Red Pepper right away. I lay on the sandy beach under some young willow trees, utterly spent. She spoke of Dr. John Christopher and said Cayenne would help me recover my health and prevent another heart attack. It seemed preposterous to recommend Red Pepper after what I'd been through. As if that could help. This was too serious for such nonsense. She told of seeing Dr. Christopher recently at a seminar in a midwestern hotel. During a break in the proceedings, a man had a heart attack in the lobby. Christopher hurriedly gave the man some water with Cayenne mixed into it and he was up and walking around in a few minutes. I didn't believe her. A heart attack can't be that easy to deal with. The man must have had something else wrong. She must be mistaken. I was still lying on the sand, trying to recover from the walk. "You look terrible," she said. "You need Capsicum Cayenne Red Pepper!' She continued to talk about it, but I just tried to politely ignore her. It was absurd to think that anything as complicated and serious as heart disease could be treated with a

spice from the grocery store. She couldn't possibly know what my cardiologist didn't know. He had a wall full of degrees. He knew what was best for me-that's why I put him in charge of my life. He knew everything. I had to trust him with my life, or die. I'd never try something as crazy as red pepper without asking him and I wouldn't want to ask him. It would be embarrassing. He might feel I was questioning his ability with some weird voodoo medicine idea. He might get mad and make a fool of me. He would think I was challenging his authority, suggesting there was something he didn't know. Maybe he wouldn't like me anymore and wouldn't try as hard to save my life. He was the Angel of Death. I was to do as he said, then God might let me live. I was to obey. And if I died, it would be neat and orderly-the accepted way. It would be "God's will." Besides, my cardiologist would make me well. ''.As good as new, " he told me. I was sure he would. It's like a religion: you have to have faith in your doctor to be saved. Giving up faith and having your doctor desert you is more frightening than dying. Besides, I had invested all this pain and anxiety, I couldn't quit now. I had gambled so much, the doctor had to be right. Everything was riding on him. Her words reverberated in my head: "You should take Cayenne Red Pepper," she said. But that was heresy. I tried to put it out of my mind. I couldn't bear to think she was right. After all this-all the money, all the pain, all the effort. All for nothing. No, she couldn't be right. She's just an "herb person," leftover from the 60s. I'll show her. I'll get well, just as the doctor said I would. I'm coming along fine. I followed all the rules when I got home from the hospital. I ate no bad fat, thought no bad thoughts, avoided stress, exertion and excitement. I went for slow walks and tried to exercise, but just got weaker. Apparently my arteries collapsed from the stress of the surgery or became completely blocked after the bypass, decreasing the flow of blood through them. The veins they

used to bypass the blocked arteries just couldn't handle the job. My heart wasn't getting enough blood. It's called coronary insufficiency. My heart was failing. It was running out of gas. I expected to die at any moment. I lived like a mushroom, hiding from death. Every day I got weaker. I looked and felt like I'd been hit in the chest with a bowling ball. I had no pep, no stamina, no energy, no color, no enthusiasm. I was too depressed to kill myself. The family spoke in hushed tones when I was around. Mustn't upset poor old Dad, lest he break in half or clutch his chest and fall over dead. I had become a ghostly visitor in my own home. I was a fragile, wimpy, stoop shouldered, impotent shadow of myself. On many occasions, I suddenly lost my energy and collapsed, like a deflating balloon. I fell into the magazine rack at Wrugreens, crushing a stack of National Enquirers. I fainted in the checkout line at the Target Store and at several supermarkets. There was no warning: I'd just have to sit down. NOW It didn't matter where I was. I was afraid I might collapse when I was driving a car or walking across the street. If I had to go to a supermarket, I would find the bulk dog food, so I could sit on the bags between forays into the food aisles. I planned every move, anticipating collapse. It could happen at work, shopping or anywhere. I couldn't open heavy doors, lift, work or exert myself in any way without passing out. I was the family mushroom, too fragile to withstand loud noises or disturbing news. For months, I couldn't even drive a car. One day in October 1978, six months into my "recovery," I had a blind spell. It was about 1:30 in the afternoon. I was vacuuming an upstairs bedroom, when it suddenly grew very dark. At first, I thought it was an eclipse. I looked outside, then turned on the overhead light and saw the bulb as a dull, gray glow. I realized I was losing my sight. I felt my way downstairs without knocking any pictures off the wall and sat on the couch, wondering what to do.

I was completely blind except for a little open spot in my periphery. It was like looking at a plate glass window with brightly colored paint running down it. At first, I could see the colors-red, yellow, blue, green. Gradually, I became totally blind and could see nothing. I waited there in the darkness, wondering if my optic nerve would be destroyed, wondering if I would ever see again. I don't know how long I sat there. It seemed like hours, but I was alone and couldn't see the clock. I thought of calling someone, but I couldn't see to dial the phone. Besides, what would I say? Hello, I'm blind. So what? There was nothing anyone could do. It didn't hurt. There was no pain at all. No headache, no nausea. I was just blind. I tried lying down, but nothing changed. I shook my head and rubbed my eyes, then massaged the back of my neck. Nothing. I put my feet against the wall and hung my head down toward the flo or, so I was upside down. I even hit myself on the head, but nothing changed. I was still blind. I sat on the couch for a long while and waited, wondering if I'd see again. Wondering if I would die. I had read that when the optic nerve i s deprived of blood, you go blind, perhaps forever. After a while, I lay down on the couch and waited. Slowly, slowly my sight returned.

My six month check-up A few days after the blind spell, I saw the cardiologist for my six month check-up. It was the 20th of October 1978, a Tuesday. The six month check-up was an important benchmark after a bypass, when recovery should be complete. I had seen my cardiologist every couple of months since the operation. In every visit, he told me I was "coming along fine," no matter how badly I was failing. At first, I wanted to believe him so much, I did. That was over now. Lying wouJdn't work any more. I couldn't ignore blindness. I couldn't ignore death. I couldn't keep lying to myself.

Of course, I told him about the blind spell while he was examining me. It was the first thing I said. He ignored me; said nothing- as if I hadn't spoken. He just finished listening to my chest, told me it was time for my regular x-ray and left the room. It was as if my complaints were so trivial, they didn't deserve a response from the Angel of Death. He was above that. How dare I challenge him for an explanation. But all I wanted was hope. After the x-ray, he came back into the examination room to tell me to make another appointment. I should have another angiogram, he said. I might need another coronary bypass. I couldn't believe he would suggest something that already failed and left me an invalid. He must have a better idea. I had to have an answer. I told him I was not "coming along fine," as he told me over and over. I was dying. My blindness couldn't be ignored. The answer wasn't more of the same thing that didn't work in the first place. Something had to be done now. Something new. " What do you expect," he indignantly demanded. "They took your heart out of your chest, stopped it, cut it and sewed on it. You can't expect it to run right." I was an ignorant, naive fool to expect to be "as good as new," just because he told me I would be. How dare I hold him to his word. He was above that. Important people like him can lie any time they want. It's almost mandatory - especially when speaking to commoners like me. I had counted on him. I had put my life entirely in his hands. He was the expert. I expected him to have an answer, to give me hope. Instead, he got angry and rejected me. "Go die," he seemed to say. I was left for dead. He couldn't handle failure, so it had to be my fault. I was a failure because I was dying. Failures should go away and die. I was shocked, then angry to realize he had accepted my death. I expected him to keep trying. There were few heart drugs then, thank God, so we didn't play chemical roulette. He wanted to sell another angiogram and bypass for $20,000 or $30,000. I wasn't buying any. It didn't work the first time and I was too disgusted to ever consider it again. Another

bypass was unthinkable. Surgery was easy for him to push; he didn't have to go through it, to feel the pain and helplessness. It was as easy as ringing up a sale on his cash register. Another day, another referral fee. He had seen my death coming closer and closer with every visit to his office, but he told me I was "coming along fine," just as he told my wife and my daughter I would be "as good as new." That's how they sell the surgery ; they sell the family, so the patient feels obligated to have it to allay their concerns. When he dies, " it's th e will of God." Nobody need feel guilty. At that moment in the cardiologist's office, I realized it was entirely up to me to heal myself. I knew nothing at all about treating heart disease, but I had to take charge. He was dropping me. He had done what he knew how to do and now he didn't have to care anymore. He followed the accepted procedures. They didn't work, but that was O.K. The patient should now die quietly, without making a fuss. The doctor was exonorated. He was a dealer, not a healer. Patients die all the time; what's important is being politically correct. Modern medicine rejects the old ways and has no new ways that work for what I have. He didn't let failure lead him to try other therapies, just because they might save my life. He knew what was really important. I had thought he wanted to save my life at any cost, but my life was only important to me. He was only interested in patients who recover. Nobody likes a loser. My cardiologist had no time for failures like me. He walked out of the exami nation, leaving me to my thoughts. I felt like I had been slapped in the face. It was stunning : He had taken me this far and then dropped me. The Angel of Death can go to hell - I'll do it myself. I'll save my own life, somehow. I don't know anything about heart disease, but I'll figure it out and take charge because I have to. I walked out of his office that day, already thinking of the lady I had met by the lake six months before. "You need

Capsicum," she had said. " Cayenne red pepper." Now it was the only game in town. My doctor was supposed to have the knowledge, so I thought I didn't have to understand it. He would do the thinking; I would simply obey. I was dying from heart disease, but I wasn't even sure what it was. Cayenne. It won't do any good, but it's the only thing anybody ever suggested, the only idea I had. I didn't know what to do, but I had to do something right away. I needed the hope. It didn't matter that it wouldn't work. It was incredibly lucky that I remembered her. I drove directly to the General Store in Som erset, Wisconsin, bought a can of Fairway brand Cayenne Red Pepper for 69 cents, went home, emptied a few capsules from an old prescription, filled them with Cayenne and swallowed three. I didn't expect anything to happen and, for the moment, nothing did.

Dick Quinn mixing up some of his original "Power Caps" in his kitchen.

"... if the whole materia medica could be sunk to the bottom ofthe sea, it would be all the better for mankind and all the worse for the fishes ." Oliver Wendell Holmes, M.D.

3 MY RECOVERY have always been a late sleeper-especially after my heart Ithantroublebut that day I woke up about an hour earlier usual. I couldn't understand here I was awake earlier it :

than usual and I felt like getting up. Usually, I awoke tired. I didn't think of the Cayenne. I went downstairs to the kitchen, sat at the table and drank my decaffeinated coffee, while I waited for nap time, like I usually did. But that day was unusual. I felt strangely impatient, even energetic. In fact, I felt so good I put on a coat, scarf, gloves and hat and went outside, still wondering if I were up to it. I felt terrific, but I was afraid to trust it. Maybe I'd go outside and faint. Though it was only October 21, 1978, an early snowfall slid off the house and deposited four feet of heavy wet slush on the porch roof. I had asked my sons to shovel it off after school that night, so the roof wouldn't collapse. I felt so good when I got outside, I carried the ladder to the porch, so they'd be sure to shovel off the porch roof. Normally, I wouldn't have carried anything as heavy as a ladder, but I didn't feel normal. I found the shovel for them. Then I decided to put the shovel up on the roof and maybe jus t push a little ice off the edge, so it wouldn't break the drain or eave. It felt so good to feel good. I climbed up on the roof and began pushing the ice off the edge. Then I started to shovel. It was heavy, wet snow four feet deep, but it seemed easy. Soon I'd shoveled off the entire porch roof, all 28 feet of it.

There was a huge pHe of snow below the porch roof. " Don't push car s, get into fist fights or shovel snow," they warned after my surgery. But I felt so good I just did it without thinking. It was entirely impulsive. I didn 't realize how irrational my behavior was until I finished shoveling and jumped off the roof into the snow pile. Suddenly, I realized what madness it was to shovel snow. Even healthy people had heart attacks shoveling snow. I took myself into the house scoldingly, like a mother with an errant child, and sat on the living room couch, wondering what had come over me. Then I remembered taking the Cayenne Red Pepper. I ran out to the kitchen and took three more capsules of Cayenne. I have taken it every day since. It's just incredible- nothing less. I have con trolled my heart disease, staved-off a h eart attack, felt terrific and enjoyed a wonderful quality of life for years because of a common kitchen spice. Cayenne is my "wonder herb." I would not be alive today without it. I have never gone back to the doctor -he has nothing for me. I have something for him, but I don't think he wants to hear about it. It's only good for the patient, not good for business. Cayenne is an herb and h erbs are not scientific, so it doesn't matter that they work. Thousands of years of clinical experience don't matter. Repeated healing successes don't matter. Saving your life is not as important as being scientific. [ t's better to die scientifically. Drugs are scientific, so it's 0.K. to kill you with them. You usually find out you have heart trouble when you have a heart attack. It is often announced by sudden death. You drop dead, as I nearly did in 1978, or you get a terrible pain in the chest or shoulder, can't breathe, feel an enormous weight pressing against you. You're out of control. You have no power. It's too late. You can't stop it. You just wait around to see if you live or if you die, like a spectator at a ball game. It's that close. There is no warning. You're not given six months to live or anything so dramatic, you just die. Suddenly it's all over.

That's your lot, if you have heart trouble. But at least you can finally stop worrying about cancer. Cayenne keeps sudden death from happening to me. It is my shield. It keeps me alive -no question about it. Every single day I bet my life on Cayenne. I put all my chips on it. I haven't had a prescription for anything since 1978. I don't take any drugs for blood pressure or fibrillation - just Cayenne and a few other herbs every day. I never ever miss a day. "Heart Disease" isn't really a disease, it is an incurable condition that begins at birth and goes on forever. You have it as long as you live. If you are an 18 month old infant, your arterial deposits are already beginning; if you are older, the deposits are bigger. If you are an American, assume there will be a problem. Your heart is fine at first, then clogged arteries interrupt the blood supply, so you have a heart attack and heart damage. You can head off the heart attack by keeping your arteries clean, but you have to clean them every day. You can't take drugs every day because they build up and poison you or stop working. Drugs are short-term poison therapy: great if you want to kill something, but no good for healing. They aren't even good for you. You get heart and circulatory problems from the foods you eat; you can only control them with the foods you eat. Herbs are food medicines that can help solve problems caused by other foods. Your doctors probably don't know about herbs, because they weren't taught about them in medica) school. Herbs are treated contemptuously by the American medical establishment. Arrogance justifies ignorance. Herbs are old fashioned, unscientific Third World medicines used by witch doctors. Medical doctors in Germany, China, India and the rest of the world use herbs because they work. They want to heal the patient, even if it sells no drugs. In nearly every country except America, herbs and other "alternative" therapies are conventional. Herbs often work better than drugs or surgery for heart disease, are usually much safer and cost the patient far

less pain, risk and money. But herbs are plants and can't be patented like drugs. The drug company can't have a monopoly, so you can 't have the herb. There's just no money in h erbs. That's why you get drugs and the knife. For 40 years, the FDA has tried to make herbs and vitamins prescription drugs, so drug companies can monopolize them. When that happens, you and I lose the right to take care of ourselves. We lose the right to "life," as the Constitution guarantees it. The big drug companies are now searching the jungles for "wonder herbs, " but we won't benefit untH they patent the drugs, if th ey ever do. We must all have access to these healing plants as they are discovered. Sick people cannot wait for the FDA to guarantee drug companies monopolies, so they can extort money from the dying. We can't let greed kill us. The medical schools, AMA politics and simple arrogance keep your doctor ignorant; the Food & Drug Administration keeps you and me ignorant. The FDA won't let the people who sell herbs tell you how they wor k without "scientific" proof. Since herbs are natural , not scientific, they can never be proven scientifically to work with the double-blind studies the FDA accepts. You can never be told what natural medicines do. Keeping secrets is as simple as that. Your doctor isn't taught how herbs work, so he can't prescribe them. The FDA and drug companies don't want you to know, so they won 't tell you. The herb company can't tell you. Herbs are secret. You have to find out about them by accident, like I did, or through a book like this one. I love to tell secrets. My experience proved to me that surgery to clear arteries and prevent heart attack doesn't work. It is nearly always a mistake. A very painful, very expensive bandaid that probably won't increase your life expectancy or prevent a heart attack. It could leave you a babbling vegetable with brain damage or other infirmity. Surgery hurts you. It helps no on e but your doctor, the surgeon, the hospital and others in the money

stream, who aren't worth dying for. Better if you just give them the money on condition they don't touch you; then go home and pretend you're recovering from an operation. The rest will do you more good than anything. Or you can have the $4,000 angioplasty, the $40,000 bypass or other fashionable procedure. Pay the money, take the risk, make your doctor happy, keep the hospital humming, put your family's concerns at rest, suffer the pain. In a little while, do it again- unless you die first. I had a double coronary bypass about 14 years ago - four times longer than a bypass is supposed to last. The comedian Jackie Gleason had his first bypass the day I had mine. He subsequently had three more. Then he died. The poor man. He had so much money they cut him to death. According to " modern medicine," I should be dead by now, but I am very much alive, thanks e ntirely to "ancient medicine." My bypass was actually a failure from the very first. It closed within a week. Herbs reopened my arteries and saved my life. I bet my life on Cayenne in 1978, and won health and energy. I won freedom from debilitating, expensive, addictive drugs and from impotence, constipation, depression and pain. I've escaped angina, headaches, leg cramps, flu, and low energy. Drugs haven't damaged my kidneys. If I die tomorrow, that's O.K. I'm already a winner, years ahead of the game. I'll be really alive right to the end. It feels good to feel good; I remember when I didn't. It's nice that everything works. I'll take Cayenne every day until I die. It keeps me alive and lively. It's my miracle. My mean old junkyard dog that protects me from the killer. Herbs like Cayenne do it all for me. Since I became my own physician in 1978, I've done a terrific job with an impossible patient who eats all the wrong things and breaks all the rules. A real bad actor. The credit goes to Cayenne and that lady by the lake. My eternal thanks to her. This is not a game with me. I have a fatal condition , for sure; could pop off at any time. I've already had my

preliminary interview. I make the decisions because I'm doing the dying. I have a right to the information I need to make those decisions, but there are powerful business and government people who want to deny me that right. They don't want you to know, either. But I'll tell you. As human beings, we deserve every chance to live, even if it's bad for the Life & Death Industry. We have that right, even if it makes drugs harder to push and drug company stocks drop a bit. The right to "life" is in the bible and the U.S. Constitution. No human being in any position has the right or authority to deny me knowledge and medicines I need for my own health. Certainly not a governmental agency like the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. God and the Constitution gave that right to me. Thousands of years of human experience shows there are safe ways to clean your arteries, strengthen your heart and prevent heart attack. But we must take our drugs and get cut to be profitable, so that's what we get. Our medical people should want to know about every cardiovascular therapy. They should want to know what works, what might save your life, because you or someone you love will almost certainly need it. But they don't want to know. It would be bad for sales. Drug pushing would drop off. No more sales commissions for heart surgery; no more drug "seminars" in Hawaii. No more drug company jobs for retiring FDA employees. Herbs can prevent heart attack. I know they can. I bet my life on them and I won. They work. Am I ever glad. Your doctor should study herbs in medical school, so you can benefit, but that won't happen. It costs important people too much money to save the lives of people like you and me. For a couple years after my operation, I got letters from the hospital asking, in effect, if I were dead yet. I answered every one with my message about Cayenne. They weren't interested. I realized then that we patients and victims must care for ourselves because the caretaking establishment doesn't care.

Healthcare should be like a buffet dinner. All the treatment options - aU your choices - should be on the table. Over there we have the surgery choice, next to it drugs, then herbs, chelation, nutrition, acupuncture. Everything should be on display, so you can make an informed choice. But it isn't that way. Your right to choose is denied.

First Law, Hippocratic Oath: Primum non nocere. Above all, do no harm. Surgery and drugs are harmful, so they should be prescribed by the doctor as the very last resort, a desperate course of action not even considered until every safe, effective therapy is tried. Big hospitals have expensive operating theaters and high buck surgeons, so you get the knife. Many hospitals actually pay commissions to M.D.s for referrals. It's like selling used cars, but not as ethical. Coronary bypass surgery happens in America 380,000 times every year because, it's incredibly profitable. Most patients have health insurance that pays about $40,000 per hit. With any kind of complications, the sky's the limit. It's a dream business opportunity. Everyone benefits but you, the patient. You are a very valuable piece of meat. They don't want you to go to the health store for treatment. Herbs heal; drugs kill. But drugs are "scientific" and can be easily monopolized for incredible profit. Herbs are cheapeven free. They work. Nearly all are safe, but some herbs are dangerous. Some are even deadly. And some are miraculous. They are powerful medicine. Since American medicine banned herbs in preference to drugs in the 1930s, doctorcaused illnesses and deaths have soared. We really have become "a nation of junkies," as Dr. Robert Mendelsohn predicted in his book, Confessions ofa Medi,cal Heretic. If you live in Germany, Japan , China, India - nearly anywhere-your doctor and you have safe herbal options. In Germany, you can buy dozens of different medicines made with herbs and clearly labeled for your heart; here you have

to guess. In other countries you can be treated for almost anything without ruining your health, your life and your finances. In China, your doctor is paid more if he keeps you healthy; here it's most profitable to make you sick. You and your doctor are kept ignorant of safe treatments. You're supposed to shut up and do your drugs. Get low. American doctors are taught that medicine is like war: you have to destroy the body to save it. They treat illness with poisons and knives that "do harm." There are many medical systems in the world, but none is as harmful as ours. You and I are victims of this ignorance. Your doctor is a victim, too, because he risks losing your trust and losing you as a patient. If he finds something seriously wrong, you go away to be treated to death. We pay with our lives and money; your doctor pays for his ignorance with frustration and failure.

I hope my experience helps y ou I am not a doctor or medical expert. I took charge of my own health care in 1978, because my cardiologist dropped me. Thank God he did. The only medical training I remember was when I learned artificial respiration in the Cub Scouts. I do not advise anybody but myself, and there are times when even I don't listen. I have found many herbs that work safely for me, cost little and are easy to self-administer. I prescribe them for myself every day. I want you to know about them and other therapies I've run across, since your doctor probably doesn't know. If you want to learn more about herbs, go to your health food store, if the FDA hasn't shut it down, and choose a book on them. There are many good books now on herbs and other safe therapies. Holistic doctors know about safe therapies. Many chiropractors, naturopaths and herbalists know. Your own doctor should look into it. It's time you know, too. That's why I wrote this book.

4 SINCE 1978 ... 'm partial to Cayenne, because it saved my life. That made quite an impression on me. After my discovery of Cayenne in 1978, I decided to learn all I could about it and tell everyone what it has done for me. I had not yet tried any other herbs. In fact, I was still skeptical about them, but I was absolutely sold on Cayenne. I carried it with me everywhere, and still do. I began looking for herb books. There weren't many in 1978 and some I found didn't even mention Cayenne, others didn't seem to know it was for the heart. I couldn't believe there was such ignorance about the herb that was keeping me alive and would help so many other people. I threw away the Diazide the cardiologist had prescribed to lower my blood pressure. After I stopped taking it, my blood pressure went down. I didn't have angina anymore, either, so I threw away the nitroglycerine tablets, too. I haven't had a drug prescription since. It was fortuitous that I stopped using the Diazide when I did. A 1991 study showed that type of diuretic actually causes heart attack, as well as chemically induced diabetes. By 1980, I was buying Cayenne in bulk from grocery stores, buying the largest capsules I could find and filling my own. I took two or three capsules every morning and more later in the day, if I felt tired. In 1981 , I found the book Capsicum by Dr. John Christopher. Christopher was a genius from Utah who discovered incredible things Cayenne can do and used it as

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the primary ingredient in his herbal formulations. Other herbalists use low powered Cayenne, but Dr. Christopher recommended the very hot little Birdseye peppers from Africa. He was right. I had discovered the less potent Cayenne didn't work as well anymore. I had built up a tolerance. Hot peppers are rated by heat units, just like whiskey is rated by proof. The higher the heat units, the hotter the pepper and more powerful it is as a stimulant. Cayenne for cooking ranges from 2,000 to 5,000 heat units. Jalapeno peppers and Tabasco sauce come in at 20,000 to 30,000 heat units. Most Cayenne sold in health food stores has 40,000 heat units. The African Birdseye Cayenne that Dr. Christopher recommends has 130,000 to 150,000 heat units. You can feel the difference. The heat comes from a substance called Capsaicin, which is in all hot food. Cayenne has five different types of Capsaicin and more of each type than other peppers, so it is much more effective medicinally. On numerous occasions, Dr. Christopher actually stopped a heart attack in progress by giving the patient Cayenne in warm water. It can also be put under the tongue if the patient is unable to swallow. About 95% of all heart attacks occur in a coronary artery that has become narrow because of cholesterol and plaque. When you are stressed, as many people are on Monday mornings, your artery contracts, making the narrowed section even smaller. That's when a blood clot can come along and block your artery completely, sh utting off the blood to your heart and causing a heart attack. Cayenne dissolves the clot, opens the artery and stimulates the heart, stopping the heart attack. Studies conducted in Thailand show Cayenne prevents a heart attack or stroke before it happens by lowering the fibrin in your blood, so blood clots can't form. Fibrin is a blood protein that causes clotting. Caffeine and most other stimulants cause your arteries to contract, raising blood pressure and forcing the blood through your system with more power. It's like tightening the nozzle on a

garden hose. You get power, but you pay a high price in damage to your body. Cayenne "jump starts" your heart with a shot of strengthening energy. Your arteries open wide, so your body gets the circulation it needs without straining your heart. You get energy you can feel-without damage. Cayenne doesn't raise your heartbeat or blood pressure. Unlike caffeine, Cayenne is good for you. It is nature's most powerful stimulant. Dr. Christopher used Cayenne as his crisis herb to stop internal and external bleeding, treat shock and in other life threatening emergencies. He made a Cayenne and oil paste that grew hair when rubbed into the scalp. He put the paste on the sole of the foot to restore circulation for diabetic people threatened with amputation due to gangrene . .He even used it to treat hemorrhoids and ulcers successfully. Dr. Christopher discovered hundreds of uses for Cayenne, but its most important role involved the heart and circulation. Improved circulation is the key to better health in many ways in cluding digestion, elimination, energy, sex, attitude, complexion, respiration, sleep, ambition, stamina, eyesight, ulcers and headaches. Cayenne improves circulation all over your body. Like other herbs, Cayenne has a healing action that effects the whole body and has many ancillary benefits. You might take it for one problem and find it corrects another. Nutrition is the basis for prevention of illness, and herbs are the most nutritious of all foods. They are ideal for health maintenance because you can take them every day, forever providing the nutrients your heart and other organs need, without danger of fatal overdose. I have used herbs to stay off prescription drugs since 1978. My circulation is terrific. I am a high-energy person in excellent health. When I start to get a cold or sore throat, I take Goldenseal and Fenugreek to take care of it. When I feel tired, I take Cayenne and get good energy that doesn't hurt my heart. When I'm tense, I use Valerian to help me relax. Herbs are foods that heal, but cannot be sold as medicines. Over SO years ago, American medicine adopted the "scientific

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method." All health claims must be scientifically proven. Herbs are natural vegetables, so they vary in size, weight and potency and don't lend themselves to scientific evaluation. Nature isn't scientific. Herbs can 't be standardized, like drugs. The FDA only accepts double-blind studies where one group takes the herb, another takes a sugar pill. No one is supposed to know which one he is taking, but you can taste, smell and feel many herbs. They can't be tested that way, so we can never prove scientifi cally that herbs work and no " claims" can be made. You can't consider natural alternatives if you don't know about them. If you can't get the information you need to make a choice, you are deprived of your right to choose. If the people selling herbs tell you what they are for, the FDA threatens them with medical fraud and puts them out of business. It doesn't matter how many clinical studies show the herb works. It doesn't matter that the herb has been used safely for two or three thousand years. Experience doesn't matter. The people's needs don't matter. Your health and safety have nothing do with it. Only money matters. The FDA is supposed to promote your health and mine by objectively assessing treatment options and telling us about them. They should scour the world, searching for the answers, then shout them from the rooftops. Instead, they hide the information I need for a Jong, healthy life and pretend to be protecting me. If the FDA won't help me help myself, it should get out of the way. Stop pushing drugs. Stop censoring information about natural medicines and help all Americans live longer, happier lives. We have the right to know about all our health options; they have the obligation to help u s find out.

Murder your mother Deadly drugs should be taken off the market immediately, no matter how much money is involved. Halcion is a sleep drug that doctors say causes blackout, memory loss and other psychiatric problems including

violent behavior. It makes simple insomnia a life-threatening affliction. Evidence Halcion causes psychotic behav ior is so convincing, a jury acquitted a Utab woman of murder. She shot her mother eight times at midnight on the day before her 83rd birthday, then placed a birthday card in her hands. She had no previous history of mental disorder or violent behavior. The jury found her "incapable of voluntary action" while under the influence of Halcion. The FDA spokesman said on NBC televison news: "There is no scientific proof Halcion caused the woman's behavior." The benefit of the doubt goes to the drug. You must prove your case scientifically. Maybe you have to murder your mother in an FDA laboratory. Doctors reported so many psychiatric problems from Halcion, it was banned in Europe, but the FDA didn't even require a warning on the label. Seven million Halcion prescriptions are written for Americans every year, but instead of warning us of the danger, the FDA has banned the natural sleep products that are known to be safe and effective. More and more people are us ing herbs instead of drugs for many afflictions. They want safe, natural alternatives that work, and are easy to use. That's why herbs are so threatening to the drug people. Relaxants like Valerian, sleep herbs like Hops and Passion Flower, and calming herbs such as Chamomile help you sleep, but the health s tore clerk can't tell you that. You can't be told which herbs are for sleep. You might not take your Halcion.

Murder y ourself The FDA has failed to protect us from Prozac, too. Prozac is the anti-depression drug with mental and physical side effects including, ironically, suicidal tendencies. Prozac will end your depression, one way or another. Prozac is implicated in hundreds of violent outbursts,

including a 20 victim massacre in Kentucky. In TIME Magazine, the FDA said banning Prozac would financially harm the Eli Lilly Company. I wonder how many of us Prozac will harm. In 1990, drug companies spent $10 billion on marketing - a billion dollars more than they spent on research. Drug prices are high because of sales and advertising expense, and exhorbitant profits- not because of research costs. They spend $5,000 per doctor, per year on promotion, while extorting money from the sick to pay for " research." The "wonder drugs" you are waiting for may be farther off than we hoped, as more and more money is poured into marketing and the FDA trashes promising natural medicines. Much drug research is to develop synthetic chemicals that resemble substances in herbs. The synthetic seldom works as well as the herb, but it can be patented. It takes forever for the chemists to catch up with Nature. Natural penicillin from the herb Hyssop was used for thousands of years before it was synthesized in a laboratory. Sick people shouldn't have to die waiting for the drug companies to get patents. They should have immediate access to the natural medicines and information they need to live. The profits from outrageous drug prices support drug company stock in the face of falling sales, as Americans turn away from drugs and toward exercise and nutrition. "Baby boomers" are saying NO! to prescription drugs. The drug companies and the FDA want to outlaw natural medicines to eliminate competition. Natural products are hurting drug sales. Today's 40-year-olds don't want to be junkies. They see a doctor for diagnosis, then buy natural medicines instead of drugs. The idea is to stay healthy with foods and medicines that are good for you. They "listen to their bodies" and don't hear them asking for drugs. Millions of drug prescriptions are written, but never filled. More and more patients don't trust prescription drugs or their doctor's knowledge of them. When they read about side effects, they find things the doctor didn't tell them, didn't

want them to know- perhaps didn't know himself. Who can you trust? ... Yourself. The government used to urge us to say NO! to drugs. They didn't mean legal drugs, but we took it that way. Now the FDA wants us to say YES!, but we know too much. The American medical industry is run by allopathic doctors who believe illness is caused by germs that must be killed. They practice violent medicine using life-threatening drugs, radiation and surgery to kill the cause of illness. Allopathic treatment works well for some afflictions, badly for others. It is practiced all over the world, but most medical systems also use nutrition and other safe, gentle therapies to heal the body. American M.D.s learn little about prevention or nutrition in medical school. Many think natural healing is an out-dated Third World concept not worthy of respect, even laughable. They seem to think natural health is a fad, only for the "health freaks." They are wrong. There is a gigantic popular movement toward natural health maintenance and away from conventional medicine. Trust and confidence fall to new lows with each story about killer drugs, unnecessary surgery, failed medical devices and FDA indifference. We need protection from people who don't think ethics and our lives are as important as money and power. Many doctors are threatened by herbs and other natural medicines they don't understand, so they treat them contemptuously. Herbs are "quaint" and old-fashioned. They may not hurt, but they certainly won't help because they aren't modern and "scientific." The message is that drugs are better, even if they kill you, because they are scientific. This is a war against your illness and war is violent, so you can expect pain and side effects. Wimps heal; real men kill. American medicine thinks they have to destroy the body to save it. That's why their treatments cause so many iatrogenic illnesses and can be financially ruinous and physically devastating. Your only defense is to use food medicines and other

practices to stay healthy. Otherwise, you're dead meat. The FDA says herbs cannot be accepted as medicines because they aren't scientific, but that's not the real reason. Herbs can't be patented, so the drug companies the FDA works for can't monopolize them. It has nothing to do with safety or efficacy or your health. It's money. In 1991 the FDA declared an herbal extract from the California Yew Tree to be a drug and called it Taxol. This happened after the National Cancer Institute and BristolMyers Drug Company got a monopoly on the trees and the processing. Taxol is effective against cancer. There's money in it, so an herb becomes a drug and thousands of victims of breast, ovarian and lung cancer may be saved. If the trees couldn't be monopolized, these people could be denied the information about the herb by the FDA and permitted to die. That's exactly what will happen to heart disease victims when the wonder herbs Cayenne, Garlic and Hawthorn are outlawed. In the meantime, Bristol-Myers Squibb, the second largest drug company, is in charge of harvesting a precious medical resource. It takes 100 years for a California yew to reach 25 feet in height and one foot in diameter, its full size. There are millions of cancer patients and each patient needs the bark from six to eight trees. With only twenty million trees, there obviously won't be enough Taxol for every cancer patient who needs it. Yet experts estimate up to 75% of these trees are being wasted by carelessness and incompetence in processing and forest management and the FDA does nothing.

Maybe you can prevent your heart attack The key to heart attack prevention is healthy, clean arteries and other circulatory channels. There are several ways to clean your plumbing. Arteries have three layers: an inner and outer sheath with a muscle between. The muscle opens and closes the arteries. When you're stressed frightened, tired or on caffeine and other stimulating drugs, your arteries narrow and your

blood pressure goes up. You get a shot of energy . If there is an obs truction in a coronary artery, a blood clot can shut off the flow , causing a heart attack. Your heart is a hydraulic pump. When the flow of blood is shut off, it sucks air and convulses, tearing itself apart. My heart attack affected the power source, so it was like shutting the motor off. The pump just stopped. I stopped, too, but it started again and so did I. I was lucky that time. Statistical s tudies show you are most likely to have a heart attack on Monday morning. It's a good time to load up on Cayenne. It keeps my arteries open and prevents blood clots that cause heart attacks. Garlic and Ginger also prevent blood clots by lowering the level of fibrin, the clotting material. Hardening of the arteries is caused by deposits that build up on the inside wall of the artery and prevent it from opening and closing. Over time, these deposits harden like mud on a river bank. Recent medical studies show garlic oil penetrates hardened deposits, softening them so they can be washed away by the soapy vitamin A in Cayenne. That's why Cayenne and Garlic work well together cleaning your plumbing, lowering blood pressure and preventing heart attack. Your blood flow is like a river. Irritants in your blood called free radicals attack an artery near your heart, causing a wound. The wound scabs over with minerals and becomes a snag that catches passing debris that builds up to block the artery. You don 't know it's happening because you can't feel it. You find out when you get angina or have your heart attack, like I did. This process begins at birth and goes on every day forever. Arterial deposits have been found in infants as young as 18 months. Serious arterial blockage was found in autopsies conducted on 18-year-old soldiers during the Korean War. These deposits accumulate during your lifetime. Eventually you drop dead. The only solution is to clean them out every day. Dissolve the block. Heal the wound. Flush out the minerals to get rid of the snag. Don't stop. Keep on cleaning every day, continuously

washing away the cholesterol, dissolving the hardened deposits, restoring circulation everywhere. Don't let the deposits get started. You can do it by taking Cayenne and Garlic every day. It's like eating soap. Garlic softens the hard deposits and gets rid of the cholesterol, while Cayenne makes the platelets slippery, so they wash away, and heals the sores on your artery walls. They work best when taken together.

Whatever works There are other ways to keep your circulatory system clean. The process is called chelation, from a Greek word meaning "to grab." A chelate is something that attaches itself to foreign matter, so it can be washed away. When you wash your hands, the soap chelates or grabs the dirt and they go down the drain together. Cayenne, Garlic and other herbs clean your arteries by chelation, as do vitamins A, C, and E, according to reseach conducted for the Heart Association. Certain kinds of fish oil chelate, too. The Chinese tell us to eat 6 pecans or 3 onions every day to clean our arteries; the Iranians say 2 or more cloves of garlic with a parsley chaser. The French suggest 3 glasses of red wine daily with plenty of cheese and fattened goose liver. It seems to work for them. Some holistic M.D.s in Minnesota have shown the arteries can be cleaned with peroxide. A small town doctor in Vermont wrote a book espousing vinegar and honey as a cleaning agent. Intravenous Chelation Therapy is a cleansing procedure developed in 1893 that uses ethylene-diamine-tetra-acetic acid (EDTA), a synthetic amino acid. The EDTA is fed into the circulatory system intravenously to improve metabolic and circulatory function by removing toxic metals and other metallic ions. The procedure can take up to 20 treatments to complete, but it costs a fraction of surgery and entails very little risk. Also, chelation cleans the entire circulatory system, not just a few inches of coronary artery.

Another safe way to clean the arteries is with Lecithin. Experts say the choline in Lecithin liquifies cholesterol and dissolves deposits. Nutritionists recommend taking three rounded tablespoons of lecithin granules at one time every day for 12 days, with light exercise about two hours after you take it. It's called the 12-Day Flush. They recommend a tablespoon or two a day as a maintenance dose. Lecithin is actually a type of water-soluable fat derived from eggs and soybeans, used in chocolate bars and many other food products. It makes water and oil mix.

The. mechanical approach There are many ways to clean your arteries and other circulatory channels - all superior to surgery. Surgical procedures like bypass and angioplasty are extremely dangerous, expensive and debilitating, often causing brain damage or other dreadful affliction. Surgery will never make you "as good as new" or even as good as you were before the operation. Balloon angioplasty is another high-risk, low-benefit procedure sold as being safer and cheaper than bypass surgery. In it, a tube or catheter with a balloon on the end is snaked through an artery to a narrowed area near the heart. When in position, the balloon is inflated, pressing the block against the artery wall, opening the passage wider so more blood can get to the heart. Balloon angioplasty works on the same principal as the equally unscientific "fat bandage" advertised in movie magazines when I was a kid. The "fat bandage" was a long cloth boa. Wrap it tightly around yourself, hold your breath, then unwrap it and be thin for two or three minutes. With balloon angioplasty, the inflated balloon inside the artery presses the obstruction against the artery wall to open the blood channel wider. It stays open for a while, just like the fat bandage makes you thin for a while. Bal1oon angioplasty stretches and damages the artery muscle so severely it collapses about one-third of the time-

then you need an emergency bypass or you die. Hospitals keep a complete bypass surgical team on hand during the angioplasty because of the likelihood of arterial collapse. If you get off the angioplasty table alive, you remain at risk of sudden collapse and death for at least a year afterward. It costs about $12,000 , if you don't need an emergency bypass or suffer some other complication. It is a high-risk temporary fix at best. If you liked the "fat bandage," you'll love the stent, the mesh and the coil. These tiny contraptions are inserted into an artery to hold it open. They quickly become arterydamaging obstructions themselves, catching cholesterol and other material to form new blockages. They become so imhedded in the artery they cannot be removed and constitute a new problem much more serious than the condition they are supposed to correct. Then there's the laser angioplasty. The laser beam zaps the obstruction and melts part of it away. The problem is that when your heart beats, your artery moves, so it's easy to zap the artery itself and melt a hole in it. Goodbye. Laser angioplasty is only safe if you are already dead. The "roto-rooter" is another example of medical mechanical genius at work. I think it was conceived by a plumber from the New York City Sewer Department. Once again, they snake a catheter through your artery to an obstructed area near your heart. Then they turn on the power and little blades cut away the obstruction faster than your Salad Shooter can slice a tomato. Another triumph! One problem: the little chunks of debris can stick in inconvenient places like your brain. Also, the drilled-out opening begins closing again at once. And what if the cute little cutter takes a chunk out of your artery? Let's not talk about that. The stress cardiogram is the first step on the treadmill to disaster for most cardiac patients. It is a diagnostic procedure that can kill you. I had one in May 1978 and didn't recover for six months. I think it caused my heart attack. Usually you have a resting cardiogram first, which records your heart rhythm but often shows nothing unusual. So you

put on tennis shoes and shorts and go back for your stress cardiogram. In a stress cardiogram, you walk or run on a treadmill with sensors taped to your body, until you collapse or an "irregularity" is detected. Often, the "irregularity" is a heart attack. During the cardiogram, your doctor sits by the treadmi.ll and "monitors" your heart and lung functions, which is like starting a fire and then watching the building burn down. People dfo during stress cardiograms because inept doctors start heart attacks they can 't stop. Worst of all, much of the data provided by the cardiogram is wrong or misinterpreted. The stress cardiogram I had was a mistake that nearly killed me. It's a deadly diagnostic procedure that doesn't work. Never again.

The porch roof Dick Quinn cleared after hi-s first dose of Cayenne pepper.

'54. merican medicine grows because its majorJunctions are economic and political, rather than therapeutic." John L. McKnight Comparative Medicine

5 KNOWLEDGE IS THE KEY ven a diagnostic angiogram has a risk that far outweighs benefit in my opinion. The idea is to look at the inside of your heart and arteries with a tiny TV camera and measure blood flow, pressure and other factors. They run a fine tube or catheter through an artery and into your heart. It is a sales procedure used to market angioplasty and bypass by showing the customer narrowed and obstructed arteries. It's also a power trip for the cardiologist who loves the life-and-death thrill of being in your heart. But it is an invasive diagnostic procedure with significant risk. You can die during an angiogram. The catheter can tear or bruise the artery, causing massive problems including death. You may be seriously allergic to the dye they squirt into your heart to track blood flow. The procedure could cause a heart attack or seizure. Angiograms are risky and the resulting diagnosis may be wrong because the extent of arterial blockage cannot be precisely measured. When the cardiologist told me my artery was 98% blocked, it was just a very unscientific estimate, perhaps influenced by the desire to sell me a bypass. Sales techniques for marketing coronary surgery are taught at some hospitals. Sales reps learn to lie about the "benefits" of surgery and use fear, guilt and hope to sell. With male patients, the surgery salesperson suggests to the wife that she will be a widow and the family fatherless

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unless he has surgery. It will make him "as good as new" and prevent a heart attack. Those are key lies. The pain and risk, the mental and physical cost are passed over. It's "a simple procedure." They do it all the time: No problem. The patient is presented as a stubborn , but lovable oaf who doesn't know what's good for him and is too macho to care. It's his wife's job to sell him-which she does. They are a family of victims who face bitter, bitter disappointment and financial ruin, but really want to believe this will work. They're afraid to ask what might go wrong. A few years ago, I met a woman at a party whose father was about to have a triple bypass. He didn't want it, but she had been sold. This would relieve her of guilt. She had accepted the risk to him and his death. He hadn't. She saw bypass surgery as a neat, clean, accepted way to resolve her guilt and anxiety by putting the Angel of Death in charge. Cut him open and let it happen according to the will of God. Whatever will be, will be. Goodbye, Dad. It's time you dodder off. I strongly suggested that her father's wishes be honored, as he would suffer the pain and do the dying. Seek a second opinion. Make sure this is not a mistake, for his sake. Just present the facts and do as he ·wishes. If bypass surgery is as sure and easy as she and the cardiologist say, they should each have it first to show their faith in Modern Medical Science and reassure her father. She became angry when I suggested her father might have a stroke or other serious complications from the operation and she wouldn't want to be responsible. She assailed me for lacking faith in our sainted medical doctors, then ended th e conversation. When last I heard, her father had survived the bypass and the resu lting stroke. By now he probably has use of his left arm and leg. Therapy is helping him speak again. There is a very high risk of brain damage from the heartlung machine during bypass surgery. In 1978, doctors usually

bypassed two or three arteries; now four and five artery bypasses are common, so the operation takes longer. That means more time for the heart-lung machine to put bubbles, plastic particles and other debris into your blood to cause brain damage. More time for the machine's rough plastic hoses to bruise the blood cells, so they clump together and cause a stroke.

Like selling used cars, but not as ethical There is another risk to you that is implicit in all coronary surgery. Payola. Many doctors get kick-backs from the cardiologist, the hospital, the surgeons and, possibly, other people. You are the product being sold. It is accepted procedure to pay commissions. Surely your doctor will take his cut. Does he need money for something, a car or trip perhaps? Does he see you as a person or a profit source? Would your doctor sell you surgery you don't need for a commission he does need? The coronary industry has spent a fortune promoting business for its drugs and surgery. The Stanford University Medical Center proposed a "retreat" for referring doctors at its swank Pebble Beach resort on the Pacific coast. Tickets to big league games and other events, lavishly catered dinners, free rent, cash payments disguised as speaking honorariums, trips - kick-backs come in many forms from hospitals, specialists and medical suppliers. Drug companies also pay prescribing doctors kick-backs. Doctors who push the right drugs get expensive dinners, paid speaking engagements, trips to the South Seas, gifts - even cash. Drug companies start selling in medicaJ school. Apparently, the pay-offs are O.K. with the FDA and AMA. Who needs ethics, principles or honor when you have money? All the big-money coronary procedures pose serious threats to your arterial system. You need your arteries- all of them. You came without replacement parts, so you have to get through life with what you have.

The rich are at risk If you are wealthy or have very good health insurance coverage, you are at greatest risk. You want "the best money can buy," so you will buy every miserable surgery on the list. You'll be cut, drugged and bled to death, literally. You want the best, but it's hard to be sure you're getting it, so you will settle for the most. Expect the full treatment. Surgeons vary widely in competence. The best kill 1.9% of their patients during bypass, the worst kill 9.9%; some hospitals lose 11. 9%. There is no way to tell the best from the worst, no matter how much money you have. Good luck. There are about 360,000 coronary bypass operations in the U.S. every year. The average cost: $40,000. Gross annual sales: $14,400,000,000. I said Fourteen Billion Four Hundred Million. If you are a piece of meat with money, you can expect several coronary bypass operations, each mo.re devastating than the last. You'll play chemical roulette, not knowing the more drugs you take, the shorter your life. In the end, treatment will kill you.

The secret: keep your plumbing clean You and I have thousands of miles of arteries, veins, capillaries and arterials- all of which must be kept clean. As I learned from my 1978 heart attack, you need every inch. Surgery only deals with a tiny part of the system and it doesn't even fix that. So surgery fails. Coronary bypass, angioplasty and gimmicks like the laser, stent and the "roto rooter" do not extend your life, improve your quality of life or prevent a heart attack. Statistics prove they do not benefit the patient, so they don't work. There is nothing in them for you but pain, depression, ruin and death. I keep my arteries clean with herbs. They're cheap, easy to use and they work. It's easy. I just get up every morning and put some capsules

in my mouth on the way to the bathroom. If it were any more complicated or took more time, I wouldn't do it. The capsules I can do easily, so I have taken them every day since 1978. I'll stop when I decide it's time to silt-up and die. That may be a while. When I swallow the capsules every morning, I know it's done. The good guys are in there now, cleaning and scouring, working for me every minute. That's nice to know. I consider Dr. John Christopher the patron saint of Cayenne, the herb that's most important to my health. Had Christopher not lived, I would not be alive today, because I would never have heard of Cayenne or what it can do. He told the lady by the lake and she told me. I have learned a lot about Cayenne from my years of study, but it began with Christopher and his books. Cayenne isn't really a pepper or even a vegetable. It's a fruit and a Capsicum. The botanical description of a Capsicum is "bag of seeds." Tomatoes are also Capsicums. Cayenne was used medicinally in ancient Egypt 5,000 years ago and is found in some of the oldest tomb art. It didn't get to Europe until 1493, when Columbus returned from his first voyage to the New World. He discovered it along the Cayenne River on the largest of the Cayenne Islands off the North coast of South America. The island was later to be home for the French penal colony called Devil's Island. Cayenne was fou nd to have remarkable healing and disinfecting powers by the ship's doctor while still on the voyage. Crewmen on wooden ships get many slivers, which often become infected. Cayenne killed infections and stopped even the most profuse bleeding instantly. It was also effective against scurvy, because of its vitamin C. Modern researchers have confirmed many of Cayenne's medicinal powers. Dermatologists at the University of California, Davis, have discovered it causes surgical wounds to heal faster than antibiotics. Researchers at West Virginia University and the Lo ma Linda School of Medicine in California have found Cayenne fights cancer, too. It prevents the liver from turning the polyaromatic hydrocarbons in

smoked and broiled meat and the aflatoxins in peanut butter into carcinogens. Cayenne makes weight control easier by causing the body to burn up to 25 percent more calories every day, according to scientists in Great Britain and Japan. When we eat Cayenne, nerve endings secrete Substance P, which alerts the brain to pain. In response to the Substance P pain signal, other nerve cells secrete endorphines, the body's pain killers, which act like morphine to stop the pain and convey a sense of well-being. Cayenne and Capsaicin, its primary active ingredient, are used to kill pain from shingles and many other chronic ailments and have also been found effective against psoriasis. After hearing that Cayenne causes pain and then kills it, I decided to experiment. I put about one half teaspoon of very hot Cayenne in a small glass of beer and stirred vigorously. The first drink was the hottest thing I ever put in my mouth. Molten lead couldn't feel hotter. The alcohol in the beer had dissolved the hot, oily Capsaicin and stripped the protective mucous from my mouth, tongue and throat, exposing the tender tissue to incredible heat. It felt like my lips were on fire. I could imagine my teeth melting. Water made it worse. So did plain beer. Finally I just decided to drink the rest of my flaming concoction, no matter what. I'd sacrifice my mouth to science. My second swallow didn't seem quite so hot. I drank a little more. There was even less pain. By the time I finished half the glass, the burning stopped completely and I felt pretty good, though I noticed some light perspiration. I had passed through the "wall of fire" and proven to myself that Cayenne not only causes pain, it kills pain. You can make a super-hot beverage with juice, too. Just put Cayenne in juice, stir and let stand. The longer it stands, the hotter it gets, as it draws the Capsaicin from the Cayenne. Put the mixture in the refrigerator for a :few hours and you'll see what hot is all about. Many ways have been suggested to stop your mouth from burning when you eat hot food. Some recommend orange

juice or mango juice, both popular in India. Others say the butterfat in milk or ice cream mixes with the oily Capsaicin and carries it away. One person I know eats ice. But I think the solution is to eat more Cayenne and trigger its painkilling action. It's a daunting thing to consider when you are already on fire, but it works. Cayenne is powerful and can be painful, but it doesn't damage tissue, so it makes an ideal spray for personal protection from violent people and animals. Cayenne spray stops the most determined assailant on contact, causing temporary blindness, collapse and loss of consciousness with no permanent damage. I got some Cayenne in my eye one afternoon. My eye watered so profusely, it soaked two handkerchiefs, my shirt and a towel. The watering went on for hours, but did no damage. My eye wasn't even bloodshot when it finally stopped, but I had new respect for Cayenne. When Columbus discovered Cayenne he called it Red Pepper, because he had been looking for Black Pepper. He brought Cayenne to Europe in 1493 and it quickly spread East, across the continent, to Hungary, where the heat was bred out and it became Paprika. Paprika is often mixed with Cayenne to make a milder blend for cooking and to use in some health products. Today, Cayenne isn't even grown on the Cayenne Islands or anywhere in the Caribbean, but is found in Louisiana and the American Southwest, Asia, Africa and one area of Mexico. Dr. John Christopher tells of a village in Mexico where great quantities of Cayenne are eaten and used in a local beverage. Villagers are known for their long, healthy lives. Once, years ago, a party of hunters from the village left on a long trip through the mountains. Along the way, a member of the party was bitten by a snake and died. It was such a rocky area, the body couldn't be buried, so it was left beside the trail to be picked up the next day. When the hunters returned, they found the body undisturbed, but surrounded by hungry vultures. The man had eaten so much Cayenne, the vultures wouldn't touch him.

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania discovered a pigeon in India that eats Cayenne as protection from predators. The pigeon literally becomes too hot to eat. Cayenne is safe, but you better respect it. It can cause an upset stomach. To settle your stomach, eat bread, crackers or rolls with water, milk or other cold drink. When Cayenne is drunk in juice or eaten on food, it rarely causes discomfort. Since Cayenne detoxifies the liver and other organs, it can cause the "burning dumps" for up to 3 days, though some people don 't have them at all. Your kidneys, liver and other organs may contain very powerful, caustic poisons they have filtered out of your blood. Now you can get rid of them. According to Dr. Christopher, African Birdseye Cayenne is the most effective medicinally. These are tiny peppers from Sierra Leon in West Africa that are actually planted by birds. The birds eat the peppers and plant the seeds for next year's crop in their droppings. The peppers grow wild, without cultivation of any kind. They're tolerated like a weed, not cultivated. At harvest time, they are gathered up and sold. If you have a heart condition like I do, you have a big, bad enemy, so you need a big, bad friend. Cayenne is just the friend I need. I have studied herbs since 1978 and found there are many that can help me. They seem to work best when combined. Cayenne works better when combined with Ginger, its facilitator. Onion facilitates Garlic, helping it work better. Myrrh fac ilitates the anti-biotic herb Goldenseal. And everything seems to work better if you power it with Cayenne, the universal companion herb. These herbs synergize when blended, so each herb becomes up to 10 times more powerful Synergistic herbs work together with actions that complement one another, making each stronger and more effective. Cayenne and Garlic synergize to regulate my blood pressure and clean out my arteries. Cayenne and Hawthorn synergize to strengthen my heart and give me more stamina. Valerian synergizes with Passion Flower and Cayenne to regulate my

heartbeat, so it doesn't bang around when I've had a long day. One day seve1·al yeai·s ago, my wife Paula collapsed while biking. She was weak, dizzy, light-headed and faint. It took an hour for her to recover enough to walk the short way home. We later learned she had an attack of atrial fibrillation, involving an irregular heartbeat and blood flow. She began taking Valerian and Cayenne, the herbs used to prevent fibrillation, and the attacks stopped.

Herbs regulate blood pressure Many herbs regulate blood pressure, but Garlic and Cayenne are most widely prescribed for blood pressure control. Celery Seed, Valerian, Passion Flower, Marijuana (called Hemp by many herbalists), Gotu Kola and Skullcap are said to lower high blood pressure, while Parsley, Dandelion and Brigham Tea raise low blood pressure. Most of these herbs work by cleansing the arteries. Marijuana relaxes the artery to lower blood pressure, just as it lowers fluid pressure in the eye to prevent blindness from glaucoma. Valerian is a wonderful herb for the heart. It relaxes me and eases stress better than Valium without danger of overdose or addiction. Originally from Eastern Europe, Valerian has been used safely for several thousand years. It is recognized as an effective heart herb in every European country. Valerian is a root that smells like dirty socks. In 17th century Europe, bathing was considered immodest, so Valerian oil became popular as a perfume. It was the only thing that smelled worse than the people. Cats and rats both love Valerian. In fact, the Pied Piper is said to have used it to draw the rats away from the village of Hamline. Valerian's odor comes from the acids that make it work. The stronger it is, the worse it smells. The name for Valium, the addictive drug, was said to have been inspired by Valerian, but the two have absolutely no connection. Valerian is much more effective as a relaxant and is not dangerous in large doses or addictive like Valium. If a

drug company could patent it, Valerian would be available everywhere. Hawthorn is another remarkable heart herb from Europe. The German FDA has registered over 40 heart medicines made with it. Typically, a heart attack results in damage to the heart muscle. Capillaries are broken in the attack, so a part of the heart muscle is deprived of blood and atrophies or dies. European studies show Hawthorn re-opens damaged capillaries to restore circulation and resuscitate damaged muscle, so the heart recovers. Hawthorn is used by European doctors to treat and prevent angina pectoris, lower cholesterol and blood pressure, correct cardiac insufficiency and restore lost heart function. Though not yet even recognized as safe by the FDA, Hawthorn is a widely prescribed heart medicine in Europe. The berries are used to make the most popular jelly there. The poisonous herb Fox Glove is the source of Digitalis, the heart stimulant. Few herbalists use Fox Glove because it's so dangerous. They know Lily of the Valley stimulates more safely and helps the heart repair defective valves. Recent studies show Digitalis causes a dramatic increase in death from sudden heart failure. People often "underdose" when taking medicinal herbs because they don't realize herbs are foods, not drugs. They are highly nutritious, many are very powerful, and most are safe. Onion, Parsley and many others have no point at which they become poisonous. If you eat too many aspirins, you will die; if you eat too much Cayenne, you will get a stomach ache. Herbs can be powerful without being poisonous. Herbs promote health with natural vitamins, minerals and other nutrients you need every day. Health maintenance with herbs is a long-term proposition. You feed your body little doses of natural, user-friendly nutrients every day, so it gets a continuous supply of the things it needs to work well and be happy. You take your herbs every day until you decide to die. There are many systems of medicine in the world and nearly all of them use herbs. Cayenne and other Western herbs are

vegetables, but Chinese herbalists also use animal parts such as deer antler and water snake oil. Conventional medicine as practiced in America has had many successes, and many failures. Its successes come from dedication, intelligence and concern; its failures from arrogance, greed and indifference. American treatment for heart disease seriously harms the patient and does not extend life. After millions spent on cancer, U.S. medicine seems even farther from success. Not a single AIDS patient has ever been cured and there has been no success with Alzheimer's disease. Maybe it's time to try some natural medicines. Ironically, cancer, AIDS and heart disease are three afflictions reserved by the FDA for conventional treatments that often don't work. They are high-buck diseases American medicine makes a killing on, medically and financially. There are safe, natural treatments for these diseases that hold great promise, like California Yew and Chaparral for cancer, Cayenne and Garlic for the arteries, Hawthorn for the heart, Gotu Kola for Alzheimer's. These herbs are easy to use, cheap, effective and safe. They are the ideal alternative to drugs. But maybe they're just too good to be legal. There are thousands of herbs, but only a few "super herbs" such as Garlic, Cayenne and Valerian. They are used in many formulas because they are so broadly beneficial. Other herbs have one overwhelming area of benefit, such as Hawthorn for the heart. Vitamins, minerals and other ingredients in herbs work together to get the job done. For example, Cayenne aids circulation by opening the arteries and cleansing the circulatory system. To do this, it has five different types of capsaicin and lots of soapy beta carotene (Vitamin A) to scour and wash away plaque and cholesterol, heal lesions and restore arterial flexibility. Valerian is ideally suited to deal with stress, depression and insomnia. It is one of the richest herbs in natural calcium, the mineral despondent people most need. In the 1980s, herbal extracts and concentrates became popular as "soft drugs." The concentrator washes the oils out

of the herbs with a solvent like ether or alcohol, then mixes the oils with some of the herb to get a concentrate. Oil from 12 pounds of herbs mixed with 1 pound of the whole herb makes a 12 to 1 concentrate. The theory is that the "active" ingredients are oil based, so extracting and concentrating these oils in a formulation, makes it more powerful. The problem: some of the nutrients that are discarded are needed to make the extract safe and effective, so the extract or concentrate doesn't have the same benefits as the herb. For example, Cayenne lowers blood pressure, but extracted Capsaicin raises it. Studies have shown Valerian concentrate to be unsafe, but Valerian herb is absolutely safe. Many desirable vitamins, minerals and other nutrients are destroyed by the heat and solvent or thrown away with the waste. Poppies are safe, opium is not; coca leaves are safe, cocaine is not. All are concentrates. Herbs already are concentrated. You cannot improve on an herb. Concentraters make the same mistake drug companies make and sometimes poison the patient. Your body doesn't use synthetic vitamins efficiently because it can't recognize them. But the vitamins and minerals in herbs are "naturally occurring," so your body can recognize and use them all. Synthetic vitamins and minerals can be toxic. For example, a leading cause of calls to the Poison Control Center in Minneapolis is poisoning from synthetic vitamin A in children's vitamins. Kids want to be big and strong, as advertised, so they overdose. Synthetic vitamins and minerals are chemically identical to natural vitamins and minerals but differ in molecular structure, so your body may not know what they are. As little as 5% of a synthetic may actually be used by your body. Much of the rest is eliminated safely but some is stored in your arteries, brain and other vital organs where it can cause problems. Drugs are often synthetic copies of substances in herbs. Many of the cold medicines sold in drug stores contain synthetic replications of active ingredients found in Cayenne.

Over 25% of prescription drugs are also from herbs. But thousands of valuable herbal medicines can't be synthesized. The healing agents they contain are only found in the whole herb. Many nutritional ingredients in herbs have not yet been identified by the drug chemists. They can't be synthesized. We all self-medicate. Nearly everybody takes vitamins, uses food as medicine or exercises. Herbs are super foods. We all should know more about them and use them more often, but the FDA and A.M.A. keep getting in the way. The number one cause of death in America is legal drugs. Drugs can't keep us healthy because they are all poisons. The "side effect" is the hangover you get from being poisoned. Since drugs are poisons, they don't heal like herbs and other natural medicines. Radiation is another type of medical poison. It has always been knmvn that radiation causes cancer , yet X-rays have been over-used for years in hospitals, medical clinics and dental offices. Mammography has been promoted as a profitable business, over safer methods of breast cancer detection. Early detection is vital since the disease is fatal unless caught early, so the number of mammography X-ray units has grown drama tic ally. Meanwhile , the incidence of breast cancer has grown, too. Ironically, studies show the highly profitable X-ray mammography used to detect breast cancer may actually cause it. American medieine has an ethical dilemma as we realize breast cancer is an Iatrogenic disease. Iatrogenic (doctor caused) illnesses have grown to become a whole new category of disease. Many patients in U.S. hospitals suffer from Iatrogenic illness caused by drugs, surgery or radiation used to treat or diagnose the original illness. If my doctor didn't know about natural medicines, I'd fire him. Maybe you should tell your doctor to learn more about safe alternatives to drugs and surgery, find a doctor who already knows, or become your own doctor as I did. To help yourself feel good and stay well, herbs and other safe, natural

foods should be part of your health arsenal. You deserve every chance to live a longer, happier, healthier life. There are herbs for every illness, no matter how serious. I use only herbs to treat my heart condition and haven't had a drug prescription for anything since shortly after my 1978 heart attack. Herbs can prevent cancer and heart attack, kill tumors, lower cholesterol and blood pressure, grow hair, treat AIDS, arthritis, asthma, angina and every other ailment. There are herbs for every organ and every physical and mental affliction known. There may well be herbs that will help you and those you love, if you can find out about them. I'll tell you as much as I can.

6 1988: MY TENTH ANNIVERSARY fter my 1978 recovery, I continued to work as a freelance writer of ads, .letters, magazine stories-anything that would earn a buck. I read every book I could find on herbs and natural healing. It was amazing how many medicines I found that I had never heard of before- all purported to have unique healing powers. I told my friends about them, but very few took me seriously. In 1988, I realized Cayenne had kept me alive for 10 years. This was definitely not just the "placebo effect" the stuff really worked. I was determined to tell the world, whether it wanted to listen or not. I naively thought the medical people would want to know, too. I couldn't buy manufactured products with the kind of Cayenne and other herbs I used, so I decided to make them myself. I would have to learn how to be a manufacturer. I was 52 years old and had been a writer for 30 years. It was time to do something new. When I began taking Cayenne, I just bought the low powered culinary variety in a grocery store. It had only a few thousand heat units of potency, but it worked fine for me at first. I soon came to feel that stronger was better. I tried 40,000 heat unit Cayenne from health stores and then discovered some even stronger 80,000 heat unit Cayenne at

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the local food cooperative. I began taking Garlic and Lecithin in addition to Cayenne. There was no identifiable health benefit from the Garlic, but the Lecithin seemed to boost my s tamina. Lecithin granules are more potent than capsules, so I took those. I was still searching for a way to "tell the world " about my experience. I decided to write a book about the herbs I had found. The book and herbs could be sold by mail order. I ran a mail order ad in the June 1988 issue of Grit Magazine selling Cayenne, Lecithin and the book I intended to write. The ad didn't produce a single order, but an elderly lady from Kansas sent me one dollar and asked for information. I sent her dollar back with a letter about the benefits of Cayenne and Lecithin. About this time, I read an article on AIDS. Some of the AIDS symptoms reminded me of my own when I was dying after my bypass, so I thought Cayenne might help them, too. I had just found some even stronger Cayenne in a wholesale catalog that had 90,000 heat units of potency. I took some capsules of my extra-strong Cayenne to an AIDS support group and buying club in Minneapolis. My Cayenne was much more powerful than any they had taken before. They each took nine capsules of Cayenne a day and reported a dramatic increase in energy, fewer colds and flu symptoms. One user told me the Cayenne gave him enough energy to go back to work. Several of them said it sometimes caused burning in the stomach and lower intestinal tract, but the energy was worth it. In what could be the most important discovery of all, several members of the group theorized that Cayenne might prevent the HIV virus from becoming AIDS. It seemed to have that effect but no one could be sure. The virus can become AIDS in a few months, but sometimes it takes years. If we could find out what delays it, maybe we could put it off forever. The HIV-infected people in their group who had gone longest without infection met one evening to look for a common trait that might explain it. Several had the HIV virus for more than eight years. They could find only one

thing: they all ate very hot Asian food several times a week. Maybe the Cayenne they ate delayed AIDS symptoms. No research is being done on Cayenne because there is so little interest in unpatentable natural medicines among people with research funds. Cayenne can't be patented or monopolized. The 90,000 heat unit Cayenne didn't bother me, but it was too hot for most people who tried it, including my friend Al Watson. On the first day, Al had the dreaded "burning dumps," as the Cayenne de-toxified his system and dumped the poisons. The Cayenne also sometimes gave him a stomach ache or heartburn, but he enjoyed the energy lift so much he kept taking it. In August 1988, Al took my Cayenne capsules to the Sebeka Town Festival. He returned to tell me I was now the most cursed person in Northern Minnesota. Something had to be done to make high-powered Cayenne user-friendly. I had to find a way to take out the pain, but keep the power. I kept looking for stronger and stronger Cayenne. It was keeping me alive, and I wanted all the energy I could get. I found a source of the African Birdseye Peppers, recommended by Dr. John Christopher. I ground them up with my kitchen blender and began taking several big capsules of them every day. At first, I didn't have any problem, though they were rated at nearly 150,000 heat units. One morning I took three or four capsules of the African Cayenne while I was hurriedly dressing for a business meeting. There was no time to eat breakfast. I put on a suit and tie and rushed outside. I had just sat down in the car when I began to feel a little queasy. I was about to have the Mother of all pepper attacks. The nausea intensified. I began to feel warm. Then came stomach cramps which grew more and more painful. They seemed to last forever. Suddenly I burst into a sweat that was so intense, my shirt, suit and stockings were instantly drenched. Even my necktie was wet. The handkerchief in my back pocket was soaked. My socks seemed to slosh in my

shoes when I walked back to my apartment. I took a shower, put on dry clothes, changed shoes and went to my meeting, a wiser man. This was the Cayenne I was looking for. The African Cayenne seemed to work even better when I blended it with Cayenne from India. They went well together. Plan ts from different places have different nutritional characteristics, so I felt the blend gave me a better balance of vitamins and minerals without sacrificing power. One day in the Fall of 1988, I discovered almost by accident that Ginger and Lecithin make Cayenne easier on the body. Ginger stimulates the stomach so it can handle the heat. Lecithin makes the hot Capsaicin blend with water and other things in your stomach so it's gentler and faster acting. I was on my way.

1989: The lleart Foods Company begins I t took me a year to refine the formulas, name them and design labels. I had decided to call the company Heart Foods when I ran the Grit Magazine ad in 1988, now I looked for a heart to use as a logo. I first thought of a heart wi th a plant growing from it. A terrible idea. The human heart isn't really heart shaped. It looks like something you'd fi nd in the butcher sh op next to pig snouts and sheep brains. One night I awoke with a mental picture of a green Valentine's heart. Perfect. I spent hours in liquor stores, drug stores, supermarkets and health food stores looking at labels. I even went to California to look at products in retail stores there. Later I found a distributor in Minneapolis who said he might sell my line to health fo od stores, when I had a line to sell. I decided to use a big heart on the label, so it could be seen on the store shelf. I wanted to use names and colors that suggested what each product was for. I named my most powerful Cayenne formula Power Caps and gave it a red heart. I made Power Caps for myself. They keep me alive and give me the energy and enthusiasm I need

to do things, like start the Heart Foods Company at age 52. Power Caps are my favorite, my mean old junkyard dog. They have more of my 100,000 heat unit blend of African and Indian Cayenne than our other Cap. They also have Hawthorn for my heart and Ginger to give me a lift and put the fire out. Thinking Caps have a golden yellow heart. I made them for my grandfather, who had Alzheimer's Disease when he died 60 years ago. Too bad he didn't have Thinking Caps then. The Gotu Kola and Ginkgo Biloba they contain might have helped. The people of China and India have used those two herbs to prevent senility and slow aging for centuries. Gotu Kola is called "healing grass" in India. It's a mental stimulant that contains no caffeine. In 60 years, no progress has been made on the treatment of Alzheimer's with drugs, but Ginkgo Biloba has shown promising results in some medical studies. Gotu Kola is rich in organic aluminum, which may remove inorganic aluminum from the brain to relieve the symptoms. Since Gotu Kola cannot be patented, no research is being conducted on it. Happy Caps are for people who work too hard, like Paula. They have Valerian, Catnip and our powerful Cayenne for stress with a cheerful orange heart on the label. The color purple is for sleep and so are Night Caps. They help you relax with Valerian, dull aches and pains with Skullcap, and induce sleep with Passion Flower. In May 1989, I introduced Power Caps, Thinking Caps, Happy Caps and Night Caps to the Minneapolis distributor. He promptly got them into several health food stores, where they were slow but encouraging sellers. It's hard to sell something when you can't tell customers what it's used for. Later that summer, I added Heart Food Caps 1:0 the Heart Foods line as our product for cardiovascular health. The formula combines my strong African/Indian Cayenne blend with Garlic and Hawthorn, the herb used in Germany to regenerate damaged heart tissue. The herbs in Heart Food Caps clean arteries, lower cholesterol and blood pressure, dissolve blood clots, stop angina and safely stimuJate the heart without speeding up the

heartbeat. Cayenne Garlic and Hawthorn synergize with each other, so each has more healing power when combined.

Getting started as a manufacturer When I began the Heart Foods Company, I looked for someone to fill the capsules for me. There are very few pharmaceutical companies in Minnesota. I found several custom manufacturers in other states, but they wouldn't work with the extrahot Cayenne I used. I realized I would have to manufacture the products myself. I looked through manufacturers' directories at the library, hut couldn't find capsule-filling machines, so I filled the capsules by hand. My first factory was in the living room of my apartment. Al Watson and I filled capsules and bottled them. Paula helped grind herbs to make the formulas. The apartment smelled like an Italian restaurant because of all the herbs. One day I was in the kitchen grinding African Birdseye Cayenne when a friend called. I got involved in the conversation and forgot the Cayenne until the grinder got very hot. When I took the top off the grinder, an ominous brown cloud rose slowly from it and stood there, like an evil creature. Not thinking, I looked into the grinder and inadvertently inhaled. My knees buckled. I nearly passed out. For a few minutes, I couldn't breathe. My eyes burned and watered so much I couldn't see. I fumbled round until I found the S\'titch to turn on the exhaust fan over the stove, crawled out of the kitchen and opened the balcony door and the windows to get rid of the fumes. Then I went into the bathroom and washed my face until I could open my eyes. I kept looking for a machine to fill capsules, so I could set up a real factory. But capsule fiJling machines cost too much and herbs were too sticky to work in most of them. I didn't have any money, anyway. I sold a few bottles of the Caps, but couldn't get big sales without money to advertise.

Financing the company with Tick Attack It was June 1989 and the biggest scare of the summer was Lyme Disease carried by deer ticks. The Caps were in some stores but it seemed no one knew it. They were selling so slowly they might get kicked out. Customers didn't know much about Cayenne and couldn't be told what it did for health. I had no money to advertise. It looked grim for Heart Foods. One night I was in a Mexican restaurant with my wife Paula and I mentioned that I knew how to make a pretty good tick repellent from herbs. I had found the recipe in an old book and used it on my St. Bernard, Keily, years before I ever thought of herbs as medicine. It was so safe a child could drink it. In fact, it tasted pretty good. Paula urged me to make some at once, and sell it in cooperatives and health stores as a new, non-toxic repellent called Tick Attack. I changed the recipe to make it smell and work better, designed and printed a label, brewed and bottled the first batch and delivered it to my distributor in 20 days. The Tick Attack fermented, so the bottles blew up, but I fixed that in the second batch. It sold on sight in the health stores and cooperatives. Everybody wanted Tick Attack because it didn't have any toxic chemicals, had a wonderful aroma and wasn't sticky or greasy. People could use it safely on their pets, their kids and themselves. The primary ingredients were Tick Weed and European Pennyroyal, both insect-repelling members of the mint family that are also used to treat indigestion. Lavender and Lemon Grass smelled great and boosted repelling power. I also used Quassia, an herbal wood from Surinam in South America that was discovered by a slave named Quassi. He won his freedom in 1750 by telling his master about its remarkable antiseptic properties, so they named the herb after him. Quassia is a bitter herb used to aid digestion. George Washington kept his drinking water in a pail made of Quassia

and drank it as a stomach tonic. It also kills flies. Tick Attack seems to act as a deterrent, not a repellent. Apparently, it works with the skin chemistry to discourage ticks from biting. Tick Attack doesn't kill or repel, it just spoils the tick's appetite. Tick Attack was an instant hit in the health stores and food cooperatives. Everyone wanted bug products that didn't kill their children or themselves. I made the Tick Attack in plastic garbage cans in my bathtub at my apartment. I brewed about 40 gallons of Tick Attack "tea" in the evening, let it cool overnight, then put on a swimming suit and bottled it in the bathtub, washing off the bottles (and myself) under the shower. I dried the bottles, labeled them and delivered the finished Tick Attack while another batch was brewing. My apartment got a little humid and the paint began peeling off the ceiling of the bathroom, but it was an otherwise smooth operation. Nothing is entirely problem-free. My son Devin was in town, so I rented a second apartment and hired him to make it with me. The summer tick season would be over soon, so there was no time to set up a real factory. Our production was over 200 gallons a day. People bought Tick Attack because it did not contain DEET, the poisonous chemical repellent that was developed during the Viet Nam War. DEET is absorbed through the skin and is said to have caused encephalitis, brain damage and death among children. It is especially dangerous to put clothes on after applying DEET, because the chemical toxins can't evaporate and more is absorbed by your body. I used some of the money from Tick Attack sales to boost my production of the Caps by buying a manually operated machine to fill capsules. It could only fill 2,700 capsules an hour, but it was well worth the $4,200 it cost. Cap sales at health food stores were still slow and the tick season was winding down. I had to find a way to sell more Caps.

1990: We discover catalogs The Heart Foods Company barely survived after the Tick Attack season ended in the Fall of 1989. Our Cap sales in November and December were about $150 per month. Power Caps and Thinking Caps were our best sellers in health food stores, but our overall sales were poor because we couldn't tell people what our Caps would do for them. In November 1989, I met Bill Hansen from Swanson Health Products of Fargo, North Dakota at a health show in Minneapolis. Bill had taken Power Caps and thought they would sell in the Swanson Health Catalog. We placed an ad for them in the January 1990 issue. The ad cost $1,200. The Heart Foods Company had no money, but I could pay for the ad with product. I couldn't imagine selling that many Power Caps. We so]d $7,700 in Power Caps with that ad. In January 1990, Heart Foods began to become a real company. The sales from the Swanson Catalog and the capsulefilling machine changed everything. We moved into a new building for start-up companies in Minneapolis. It was in an old part of town that the city and some Native American people were rebuilding. Sales in the Swanson Catalog rose every month. We offered Heart Food Caps and Thinking Caps. Both sold well. We made Tick Attack again that summer and it sold well, too. The building we were in was new, well designed and well built, but it wasn't designed for us. Whenever we ground up those hot little African Birdseye Cayenne Peppers, acrid fumes permeated the building. They got into every office. Eyes burned. People choked. Meetings were disrupted. People were seen taking their telephones into the hallway, where they could breathe. When we used Garlic or Ginger in a formula, the odor spread everywhere. The Valerian we used one day to make Happy Caps smelled so bad our neighbor thought there was a dead mouse in her office. We closed all the air vents and sealed ourselves off from

the rest of the building, but that didn't help. It was too late. The building was saturated with herbs. We had to stop adding to the problem. In early 1991, we moved into a defunct supermarket on a corner considered the toughest in town. Our parking lot got a fresh coat of broken glass every night. There were so many marked and unmarked police cars around, you couldn't find a place to park. We had shootings, stabbings, fights and arrests every day. The little black guy who swept the parking lot was shot in the head three times in the nearby park. I returned from the bank one morning, to find the door blocked by a woman with a knife in her chest. Life on the edge was never

duJl. Our sales in the Swanson catalog continued to grow. In January 1991, sales broke $30,000, mostly in Power Caps, Heart Food Caps and Thinking Caps. The Caps didn't sell very well in retail health food stores, because we didn't have enough money to buy national advertising. Most Americans didn't know much about Cayenne, just as I didn't in 1978. Most important, I found that people who tried the Caps, tended to continue taking them. Cayenne works for me ; obviously it was working for other people. I was more determined than ever to spread the word.

The FDA enters the picture In April 1991, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) ordered Swanson Health Products to stop selling our products in their catalog because they objected to the advertising. Other people could sell them, but not Swanson. They were specifically forbidden to sell Heart Food Caps "or anything similarly formulated." The Heart Foods Company lost $14,000 in monthly sales because of the FDA's action. We kept operating, but we were actually dead in the water. Neither health food distributors nor catalog publishers would sell our Caps because they feared it might incur the FDA's wrath.

We had some other Cap sales and Tick Attack season was beginning, so we weren't entirely dead yet. In July 1991, the FDA sent us a "Warning Letter" objecting to our ads, labels, names and literature. They also banned the sale of Night Caps for sleep and Gas Caps for nausea because they said only drugs could be sold for those purposes. I asked them about registering our products as drugs but they said that was impossible. I answered the FDA "Warning Letter" with four letters of my own. I told them how we were complying with their letter and asking them what we could say about our Caps. I asked if we could relate the historical use of the herb over the centuries, how it was being used now in the rest of the world, what recognized herbalists said about it or data from documented clinical studies. They didn't answer. In November 1991, the Environmental Protection Agency banned Tick Attack because it wasn't registered. Registration would take many years and cost millions, unless we added DEET to the formula, which we weren't willing to do. We used the money from Tick Attack sales in that last summer before the ban to buy a display and attend a couple of health food shows. We hoped health food stores, distributors and catalogs would sell our Caps. A few did, but most were afraid the FDA would attack them when they next attacked us. Ironically, the Heart Foods Company was "left for dead" by the Health Food Industry, just as I was "left for dead" 13 years ago by the Medical Establishment.

"I Beat

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